Kernow Damo

Right, so Andy Burnham's government has just dangled its new “Double Lock” on arms to Israel. It’s a solemn pledge to refuse new export licenses for any weapon which might actually assist the Israeli occupation, and it’s going to be added to the existing suspensions on the supply of arms to that country like an extra padlock on the very secure box such things are being locked in.

Trouble is, it seems that box might as well be made of the cardboard variety.

The government’s own figures, have already destroyed the whole pitch. This new lock on arms to Israel has achieved exactly nothing, unless you count giving Starmer’s sham of an arms licence suspensions round an equally pointless friend to share its existential crisis with. Labour claims that it is ‘extra security’ all while the most important defence contract of them all remains as untouched now as it was before.

Back on the 8th of September the Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, announced a package of measures aimed at Israel’s illegal occupation and settlement policy, and this package included a ban on business dealings with the illegal settlements. There was also a promise to reject export licences for arms and other items that materially contribute to the occupation. Was this not what David Lammy told us would happen under Starmer already? Burnham really does seem to have been left a manual by his predecessor doesn’t he? Miliband called it a “double lock against arms sales” and said that it would stay in place as long as the occupation did.

Right, so as many of you will no doubt remember, on 1 April 2024, three British citizens were killed by Israeli forces when the convoy they were travelling in, working for the World Central Kitchen as they were, was attacked in Gaza.

On that day, a British spy plane was operating over Gaza however, one of those surveillance flights where the footage gets shared with Israel, the claim being they were looking for Hamas held hostages, and the Ministry of Defence very much still holds the footage, but where Israel could have it, it seems nobody else can, not least the families of those 3 British aid workers.

Keir Starmer's government, invoked national security as it’s justification at the time – ours or Israel’s being the burning question there of course – and whispering about RAF secrets so they kept that footage under lock and key. They even refused to say whether the plane was directed at the right area over Gaza, making it all the more cagey and all the more strange.

Now the families want this material admitted as evidence at the British inquest into those World Central Kitchen killings. An inquest how very, very inconvenient!

Andy Burnham has of course inherited the keys to Labour HQ from Starmer now, and a bulging bag of awkward questions now sits festering on his desk like a cat proudly depositing a half-chewed pigeon.

Burnham might not have ordered the Israeli strikes, nor did he authorise this particular RAF flight, though he has absolutely signed off on an RAF refuelling plane for Saudi Arabia as they make war on Yemen again and a military flight left RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus bound for the Nevatim air base in Israel just two days ago, so that’s on him too. What’s it doing Andy?

Right, so the tireless repairman of all things broken by himself, Donald Trump, has at last come up with what he says is the solution to the American major problem over fertiliser shortages.

Or so he’d like us to believe.

A supposedly 'massive' potash deal with Belarus. The slight hiccup being that there is no deal though, no potash either and that the man who had promised cheaper fertiliser is now shaking his tin cup at Putin's favourite despotic henchman after his own little war with Iran, which he managed to turn into a full-fledged farce, had gone to pieces, plus the beef he started with Canada on top of that.

You see, this war has not only raised the price of oil and provided another opportunity for Donald Trump to declare that a bomb is a valid diplomatic argument, it has snarled shipping through Hormuz and cut off the Gulf energy flow, on which the fertiliser industry also happens to depend. Nitrogen is made from natural gas; phosphate depends on regional production and transportation, which are now also chaotic and then there’s the potash.

And potash, phosphate, and nitrogen, are distinguished by their different functions. For leaf growth and grain increase, nitrogen is necessary; phosphorus, phosphates develop the roots and gives the plant the energy to bloom and seed and potassium, the potash, controls water absorption, maintains balance in the plant, and enables it to produce good yields. So you need all three don’t you?

Therefore a lack of nitrogen cannot be compensated by a surfeit of potash any more than one can replace a missing car tyre with a steering wheel. They might both be wheels, but it ain’t gonna work is it?

Right, so Donald Trump strode into the United Nations with his chest puffed out, ready to present his ideal ultimatum to Iran. Nothing quite gets his blood pumping like threatening to obliterate another nation, declare the intent to commit a war crime as that would be if they don’t let him get his own way. All very grown up, a playground bully accusing another state of being the bully of the Middle East, when the orange oaf himself is the reason oil prices are exploding. But he does love the attention doesn’t he?

All very statesmanlike. It’s the Henry Kissinger school of peacemaking isn’t it? Announce peace in Vietnam while Cambodia still takes the punishment.

And then, barely an hour later, came the heckling from the cheap seats

Well, that escalated with all the grace of a car on fire didn’t it?

That’s not a dementia-addled dip in the sales pitch. That’s the pitch folding itself into a paper plane and nose-diving straight into the nearest waste paper basket.

He’d barely finished his big moment before reality strolled in, rolled its eyes, and handed him a mediator’s phone number.

Right, so Andy Burnham thinks the best thing to do during the air-bombing of Yemen by the Saudis is to send one of the RAF’s flying petrol stations in to refuel the perpetrators of the carnage.

But of course it gets tarted up as anything but doesn’t it? Labour calls it "defensive," because, don’t they always? We’re not involved, honest guv. If you say something often enough eventually it becomes the truth is apparently the thinking. Like claiming you had nothing to do with the bank robbery because you only drove the getaway car.

It was a day when Saudi bombs were falling on Yemen; families were picking through what remained of their homes; and an RAF Voyager was in the air, keeping the Saudi military supplied, like Deliveroo for airstrikes.

Here’s what they had to say about that decision.

“Defensive military support.”

That is the government’s explanation. Three words, apparently meant to turn Britain from the bloke holding the ladder into a passer-by who just happened to be there.

Air-to-air refuelling keeps military aircraft in the air longer, lets them go farther from their base, stay longer in an area, and return less often to the ground. It is intrinsic to any actions the Saudis may choose to be carrying out.

The British tanker does not hand over fuel having been given a solemn assurance that it will be used only for charitable purposes and spontaneous hugs has it?

There’s no special shut-off valve marked “defensive only”; no Labour-approved nozzle, with a rosette on and a Vote Andy sticker, which shuts itself off, in case the aircraft ever gets aimed at Yemen. It is simply fuel supplied to an air force actively engaged in a bombing campaign.

Right, so, it seemed that Benjamin Netanyahu assumed Israel’s military superiority was something to be passed down like a hoard of treasure.

Definitely not to be shared. Hardly to be questioned. Certainly not something Saudi Arabia should be allowed anywhere near without first handing him that lovely normalisation deal he’s been after for so long but there’s fat chance of that fairy tale coming true anytime soon.

Israel has been the only state in West Asia in possession of the F-35. Not just operating it either, but enjoying its own specially modified version, because apparently ordinary preferential treatment wasn’t quite preferential enough.

Washington, however, is also knee-deep in this particular mess. Keep the Saudis hooked on American armaments, American training, American software and every overpriced Pentagon contraption bolted onto the thing. Keep Riyadh looking to Washington, rather than Beijing. Keep one of the Gulf’s biggest powers tied into the American military system for years to come. Especially now they are getting a wee bit desperate with regards to getting their oil shipped out and Little Donnie refusing to save them from those man and nasty Houthis.

And, naturally, that procurement process keeps them heading back to the American arms bazaar whenever they need an upgrade.

After all, Donald Trump, who is always in search of opportunities to sell weapons, greenlights a deal to sell the Saudis 48 F-35 jet fighters for $24.3 billion. And of course Israel immediately starts scribbling down a list of compensations faster than a little boy who saw his brother open a bigger, more attractive present.

Yes, the Saudis are apparently being allowed to purchase F-35s and Israel is whining like a little b*tch that it won’t have the biggest and best toys anymore.

Right, so Donald Trump has won Greenland. Apparently.

He hasn't bought it. He hasn't annexed it. He hasn't even managed to claim sovereignty over a single Greenlandic wheelie bin. Still, none of that matters because Trump says he's won - and as we all know, reality is contractually obliged to catch up with his imagination sooner or later.

According to Trump, the United States now has "permanent control" over Greenland's security and "all other needs." Forever. Eternity. The Infinite Life Agreement, which sounds less like a diplomatic breakthrough and more like the sort of thing you'd get upsold by a Bond villain moonlighting as a dodgy broadband salesman.

So here's the announcement.

There you have it. Permanent authority. Security. "All other needs." America's wildest dreams fulfilled, courtesy of the greatest deal-maker ever to shuffle a deck, lose half the cards, and still declare himself the winner.

And this, rather wonderfully, is how that breathtaking triumph was being described in Denmark.

"Congratulations, President Trump. You've just achieved exactly what you always had."

Oh dear.

Sadly for Little Donnie that is the truth of things, even if his oatmeal for brains can’t quite process it. They handed him what amounted to a rusty old key and Trump mistook it for the deeds to the palace, and now he's out front boasting that no president in history has ever owned a doormat quite as magnificent as his.

Which is why this is why we’re all finding this so bloody hilarious.

Right, so the former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson has joined Palantir. He has gone all-in and signed on as Palantir UK's Senior Vice President no less. What a convenient vacancy to have come up!

The thing is though, since Tom Watson is still a Labour peer, and Palantir as we know is unfortunately very much already in the British public sector, the whole thing would be a nasty enough Labour Party story in and of itself if we just covered that.

But the timing is, as it were, almost poetic: Camden Council’s pension fund is now entangled with Palantir, Camden is in trouble because of its association with Israel, and the Labour candidate to run against Zack Polanski in Holborn and St Pancras is the Camden Council Leader, Sagal Abdi-Wali. So a bad optics news story has now just got so much worse and it’s all collapsing onto that election now. Abdi-Wali has hardly covered herself in glory without Watson’s help though.

She stood right there, in the middle of Camden Council, where the protesters were spelling out an issue which the Labour Party keeps trying to sweep under the carpet and which keeps coming back every time.

Gaza.

Palestine.

Israel.

And now the very pro-Israel Palantir on top.

Four topics the Labour Party would I am sure have loved to keep completely separate, because if they were put together, Zack Polanski's Green Party campaign leaflets will basically be writing themselves

So lets dig into all of this and see where it all comes together then.

Right, so the Saudis are claiming to have heroically struck down an Ansarallah drone that was heading for Mecca, before it even got to the gates.

Who can tell? It might be so. It might well be that unicorns also occupy the sky over Riyadh.

But before Riyadh starts preaching, expecting the world to sit obediently like a car dashboard figurine, let's actually look at the ground reality.

This is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait of course, one of the world's most important shipping routes.

And now it's quieter than a Saudi press conference when the PowerPoint presentation breaks down, and the generals have run out of excuses.

Saudi Arabia has been bombarding Yemen for years with money, munitions, aircraft, and other people's sons. Despite all this, they have just lost te city of Mokha, Mayyun-or Perim Island, as it is known-and the strategically important territory surrounding these straits.

The Gate of Tears.

A very splendid name, really, and a most poetic one for Mohammed bin Salman, who right now is probably going through boxes of tissues as fast as his air force is getting through fuel.

Those are Ansarallah, or Houthi fighters reportedly celebrating in Mokha.

While all this was going on, the Saudis were dropping bombs elsewhere in Yemen. The Houthis had marched right down to the coast, and now the world watched another crucial shipping lane in the Middle East empty because the Saudis couldn't hang on to the terrain.

They look like they need a bigger boat to pinch a line from Jaws. So then, as if by magic (or maybe it was just desperation), something new suddenly appeared.

Mecca.

Right, so, five of Israel’s six major Mediterranean desalination plants had been shut down after an algae bloom clogged the seawater intakes of the plants.

Five out of six. How could this have happened, is this the next Biblical plague after the bees and the rats that I covered the other day?

No rocket had been fired. No Iranian missile had flattened the crucial machinery. No Houthi drone had given an unexpectedly accurate survey of Israel’s water resources.

Only a bunch of green pond scum, which, as far as causing Israel significant problems, effectively has better aim than half the region's artillery.

Now it should be said that since the worst of this, plants have been brought back online, so it's not like Israeli taps are all spitting out green stringy muck, and Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t been reduced to brushing his teeth while swishing imported Evian in his mouth-but give it some time perhaps, because the problem hasn’t exactly gone away either.

And whilst it might seem a bit trivial, this is actually a pretty significant thing. Of the six major plants which supply Israel with water from the sea, five went offline at the same time. Karma some might argue after they took out so many desalination plants in Gaza.

If this doesn't qualify as a crucial system collapsing, what exactly are we waiting for? Bibi going about in the street with a saucepan to catch rainwater for his morning coffee?